Sorting holiday decorations after the season

Holiday decorations come out once a year and go back in a hurry. That is why the boxes end up holding dead light strings, chipped ornaments and three garlands nobody has hung since the last move. Sorting them takes an afternoon if you do it before the boxes go back on the shelf.

Empty every box before you sort anything

Don't sort while digging. Dump the boxes onto a table or the floor and look at the whole pile at once. Half of why decorations feel overwhelming is that nobody in the house has seen the full inventory in years.

Group by holiday as you go — Halloween in one spot, Thanksgiving in another, Christmas in a third. If you decorate for one holiday and not the others, that tells you what those other boxes are doing in your basement.

Plug in anything with a cord

Test every string of lights before it goes back in the box. If a strand has a dead section, try a bulb swap; if that doesn't fix it, it goes. Damaged cords are a hazard, so don't hand them to a thrift store hoping somebody else will repair them.

• Light strands that fail after one bulb swap
• Shattered glass ornaments and anything with a chipped rim
• Tinsel, garland and ribbon that sheds when you touch it
• Half-burnt candles and scented ones that smell like nothing
• Printed napkins, plates and cups left from a party
• Wreaths that have lost more than half their leaves

The ornament box is the emotional one

Keep the handmade ones, the ones with a name and a year on them, and the ones you actually hang. Put the rest in a box and leave it for a month. If you don't miss them, they can go.

Broken sentimental things are the hardest. Keep one, not the set. A single chipped ornament from your grandmother does the same job as twelve of them in a shoebox.

Where the extras go

Thrift stores take decorations, but timing matters — most would rather have them in November than in January. Call before you load the car. Neighborhood give-away groups move holiday stuff fast, especially village pieces and boxes of baubles.

An artificial tree is the hardest thing to give away, because everyone who wants one already has one. Offer it early in the season, not in February. Anything with a plug that no longer works goes to e-waste, not the donation bin.

Store it by holiday in clear bins

One bin per holiday beats one giant bin labeled Xmas. Use clear bins so you can see what's inside, and tape a note to the lid with the contents. Keep the ornament hooks in the bin with the ornaments, not in a kitchen drawer.

Put the tree and its stand in the same bag. Nothing is worse than finding the tree in November and the stand in January.

The mistake people make is buying new bins before they've sorted. You end up buying storage for the volume you have instead of the volume you're keeping, and then the new bins are full of the same dead lights.